CollectDocs is our Swiss army knife/duct tape/SUV application for getting things done at work. Based on the ubiquitous checklist, CollectDocs will make any process that involves a list of documents to collect, tasks to complete or information to gather far easier, more organized and even automated. Try it out for yourself at CollectDocs.com.

The Requirements feature within CollectDocs adds another level of review to any process. Any item type (Document, Data or Task) can have a Requirement specified. In fact, you can have more than one Requirement per item. The Requirements need to be completed before an Item will be considered Complete.

For example, you could use a Requirement that specifies that a Document "needs to be reviewed" before it is completed. Until a user clicks on the Requirement completed icon, that item will not show as complete. The item actually will show a yellow warning sign to indicate that a Requirement is missing.

You could have two requirements for one item. For instance, Needs Review by Jack and Needs Review by Beth. Of course, the History will show which user clicked the Complete icon, just in case you were wondering. It’s a great, simple workflow feature.

Dashboard

The Dashboard is one of the best features of CollectDocs. The Dashboard consists of the list of checklists, the current notices, access to your forms and templates and access to your InBox. The list of checklists includes a progress bar for each checklist along with the checklist owner, created date and due date. This gives you a very quick view of the status of everything that you are working on.

The list of checklists can be filtered to help you manage a large quantity of checklists. You can also Hide checklists and Complete checklists. From the Dashboard you can choose to show hidden checklists or to view Completed checklists.

The Alerts help keep you informed of what has been completed by users who you requested an item from. You can quickly preview any form or template from the Dashboard and add, edit or delete from the Dashboard.

The InBox is the holding place for documents that you have uploaded but not yet assigned to a checklist. Documents can be uploaded in a batch, one at a time or even emailed into the InBox. From the InBox, documents can be dragged and dropped onto any checklist item or they will create a new item if dropped below or above an existing item (watch for the red line to appear).

Use Cases

Construction Loan Funding: Each month during a construction project, the developer gathers up the invoices for all the work that was completed the prior month. That information gets organized and summarized and submitted to the bank for approval and funding. The steel vendor gets paid, the concrete vendor gets paid, the architect gets paid and so on, month after month until the project is complete.

CollectDocs can be used to set up a checklist for all of the budget line items and invoices under each line item. When all the invoices are collected, the checklist can be exported and sent to the bank. The bank will receive a well organized and complete draw package. As an option, you can give the bank access to CollectDocs so they can do the review online and download the package when it is completed.

CollectDocs even allows you to include the cost codes and amounts and run reports to show the totals. These reports would be very beneficial to the bank and the developer.

Audit Checklist: The audit is an annual ritual at many medium and large companies. It involves reviewing documentation, testing calculations, interviewing the heads of many departments and requesting information from the company’s vendors and customers. In other words, it is a long list of tasks, data and documents to collect and review.

CollectDocs is the perfect tool to help an auditor to keep the process organized and ensure that nothing is missed. In addition, as we mentioned before, a review process can be implemented by using the Requirements feature.

The Request feature is perfect for gathering documentation from vendors and customers. The Reports are perfect to keep track of missing items and who is responsible. The Notifications help keep everyone involved on top of the process so that the audit is completed as quickly as possible.